Welcome to the board :wavey:
I'm sickeningly jealous that you got to hit the Nurburgring.

Side note about the gas thing...
I think that we have (at least in some areas of the states) a reasonable excuse for whining about gas prices: lack of decent public transportation. I mean in like, New York city...yeah, subway or cab will get you anywhere. Heck, bikes are even a viable option. Many countries in Europe have good alternative forms of transportation - think of the trains running all across continental Europe. When I was in England, the town we stayed in was so small, we walked *everywhere* other than to neighboring towns. But living in the suburbs of a larger city with a crappy public transportation system leaves you with no good alternatives to driving. I'm not saying this gives us a 'right' to complain all we want, but I think we do have some reasonable reason to be upset about it.